Animi Honesti
by Sela-Lovegood
Summary: While battling the villain of the week Sam gets hit with a curse. At first it doesn't seem like anything has changed, except for his feelings for a certain web-and-lame-pun-slinging teen. Who also has similar feelings.


**A/N: No preamble, just gonna go ahead and say enjoy!  
****Disclaimer: I own nothing**

* * *

Peter was, plain and simple, having a terrible, horrible, no good, very day. To be fair, though, it hadn't started to get real bad until they were sent out to bring a criminal in. Until then, things had been the fine and normal kind of bad that he was used to dealing with every day.

He had gone to school after being woken up by Aunt May, who nearly caught him in his Spider-Man costume that he had forgotten to take off before he collapsed into bed the night (or rather very early morning) before. Then he met up with MJ and Ava, who were talking by his locker, and got some last minute algebra help from the latter while dodging MJ's questions about _why didn't you text me back last night, Peter, I saw Spider-Man and you still haven't seen him with me this is unacceptable_. And later he got lectured in Spanish for wrongfully and horrendously conjugating a verb that Sam smugly corrected.

And finally Flash made a threat on his person for something that Peter honestly didn't care about, let Flash do his worst. But as par for course, Coulson walked out at that moment and gave Peter detention, which could only mean one thing.

He walked into the detention room and took his usual seat next to Sam and began to wonder what they could possibly still have to do this week, they hadn't had much time to train, but they had brought in a villain from SHIELD's master list each day for the last week, didn't that count for something?

But still, it had been a normal, unextraordinary day, as far as Peter was concerned.

And considering all the missions the team had been on recently Peter, and the others as well, had been hoping for a day off to at least do _homework_. But they were needed to take down a low level crook, one that hadn't even been on SHIELD's radar until today.

He called himself Aphrotate, an aspiring magician, civilian name Aaron Mars, who used fatal magic tricks that had more power to them than a normal human should be able to possess.

"We've called Doctor Strange to come and measure the intensity of Aphrotate's powers, but we need to bring him in first, which is where you come in." Fury said, showing the team a picture of a young man with bronze skin and wild, dark hair. Objectively, Peter thought, Aphrotate wasn't bad looking, even Ava was staring a little more than necessary at the hologram.

"Aphrotate will use everything in his power to avoid capture, as he has before. He will use anything from his looks and charisma, most likely enhanced by his powers, to casting spells to harm. He prefers the former, he's not one to get his hands dirty." Coulson added, pulling up a chart of the ways Aphrotate had eluded capture.

"In other words," Fury said, "do _not _underestimate him. Dismissed."

Peter pulled on his mask as the rest of his team began to talk about the flavor of the week (or day as the case had been).

"I think Ava should sit this out, I mean, no offense, but we all saw the way you stared at Aphro-turd's picture." Luke said almost sheepishly.

Ava crossed her arms and glared, "And would you feel the need to justify an all-_girls_ response team?"

Sam and Danny laughed as Luke stared at her before blushing and mumbled, "There's no good answer for that."

Peter called them to attention, "Alright, guys, let's go take this magic freak down so we can go home as soon as possible." And damn, he meant it. The whole villain everyday was starting to get to him and the team. Hopefully once they took down this not-even B class baddie Fury would let them have, like, a week off.

It wasn't hard to track down Aphrotate in the long run. Like all villains in the Big Apple he was busy robbing a bank. Peter had to wonder why people even still put their money in banks in this city when the chances of it being stolen were higher than the odds of finding out that _yer a wizard, Harry_, but he shrugged it off as he watched Aphrotate pull out a wand, _a wand_, and wave beams of crackling light at civilians.

Immediately snapping into action, Peter swung down and webbed the innocents out of harm's way.

Aphrotate lowered his arms and stood in a rather neutral, non-menacing pose as he spoke in a crisp, clear voice that seemed to ring with every word,

"I was beginning to wonder when I would gain the attention of SHIELD, but I appear to be underwhelmed that the baby Avengers are the ones sent to try and bring me. Did I not even warrant a visit from a _real_ SHIELD agent?" One of Aphrotate's artistically manicured eyebrows rose slightly.

Peter quirked his lips under his mask and spoke in a mock-hurt voice, "What, we're not bright and spangley enough for you? But we're so much more fun than the Avengers, just don't challenge Nova here to jumping from swings, he cheats."

"I am not interested in petty games." Aphrotate returned, his fingers wrapped around his wand a bit tighter than before.

Nova looked at the magician and smirked, "That's a shame, that's all we know how to play."

Aphrotate looked up at the human rocket and his lips twisted into a smile that sent ice down Sam's spine.

"It does appear that way, though they appear to be games of desire than those of mirth."

They barely had time to process what that meant when Aphrotate turned to Peter and raised his wand and pointed it at the web-slinger, "I wonder how you will continue to play when I change the rules." Peter made to snatch the wand with his webbing when Aphrotate changed direction suddenly and shouted,

"_Animi honesti_!" A colorful light so bright it was nearly white shot at Nova, sending the teen flying backwards through the air.

From behind Aphrotate, while he was basking in his work, Ava jumped at him, pulling the villain down as Danny used his fist to knock the magician over, while Peter finally pulled the wand from his grasp with his web shooters. Encasing the magician in web confines Peter swung over to Nova to check on his teammate. The human rocket was unconscious, but still breathing, so Peter went back over to Aphrotate.

"What was that you hit Nova with?" Peter asked.

Aphrotate's head lolled as he looked up at the masked teen, his nose bleeding, and let out a dark throaty laugh that didn't match his young, attractive face. His voice was slightly disturbed by the condition of his nose, but did nothing to reduce the effectiveness of each word he spoke.

"You will find out soon enough. I merely looked into your hearts, it shall prove to be the most wonderful distraction, for myself, at least." A smirk crossed the villain's features, his wand yanked itself out of Peter's grip and flew back to its owner, the webbing disappeared and so did Aphrotate in a flash of bright light.

Peter and the rest of the team stood gob smacked and wondered how they were going to explain this one to Fury.

"You let him get away?" Fury shouted at the team that sat around the oval table. They had returned to the Tri-Carrier with no Aphrotate and an injured teammate, not even close to the results Fury had expected of them. Nova had been quickly taken to the med-bay, his vitals remained secure. Actually, aside from the unconsciousness, he was in perfect condition, according to one of the nurses that had assured Peter that, yes, your friend would wake up soon, in the meantime Fury wished to speak with you and the rest of your team, which translated perfectly to, "Stop hanging around the med-bay, you're not going to wake him up by just standing around. Oh, and you need to go get yelled at by the director of SHIELD."

"It's not like we untied him ourselves," Peter tried to reason with Fury, "his wand flew back to him and the webbing vanished just as fast as he did."

Peter looked at the rest of his teammates, who all quickly became very fascinated with the table they were sitting at.

"Regardless," Fury growled, each word was clipped and spoken with deep disappointment, "We can't measure the power a villain if we don't have that villain here. You had one job, to bring Aphrotate in, and instead you let him go and got a teammate injured in the process. I am not happy. You are going to be doing some serious training for a while until I deem you worthy of going back out into the field and taking down SHIELD's most wanted. In the meantime, we will have every agent available out searching for Aphrotate, we may even call in the Avengers, he is no longer your priority. You are dismissed."

Peter decided to poke the bear just once, "Can we have the weekend off?"

A vein pulsed in Fury's temple.

"Right, training," Peter sighed and ran to follow his teammates to the training room. The week just continued to get longer by second.

But instead of going to the training room, Luke, who had been leading the procession, veered right and headed to the med-bay.

"'Just wanna check on the guy real quick." He tried to justify, but he didn't need to, everyone was just as worried.

As they walked up to the doors they saw a nurse come out, writing something on her clipboard. She looked up and smiled at them.

"Oh, hello," she held the door from sliding shut. "Your friend is awake, if you want to see him."

Sure enough, when the team stepped into the med-bay, Sam was sitting up on the cot and messing around on his phone.

He didn't look up from what he was doing and said, "They cleared me to leave once I feel like it, I feel fine, but I also feel like Fury slapped training onto us, so I feel like crap for right now." He looked up and smirked at his friends, but it slipped slightly when he met Peter's eyes.

Sam stood up and looked at one of the doctors and said, "Y'know, I feel perfect, later, Dr. Howser." The doctor proceeded to write something down and then gave Sam the okay.

"Guy's, like, twelve or something, I swear." Sam stage-whispered to his friends who all smiled at the fact that their friend was healthy enough to crack lame pop-culture jokes.

Peter clapped his friend on the back, "What happened to feeling like crap to get out of training?"

Sam looked Peter in the eyes and smiled slightly, "I decided that, you know, I was the one that got hurt, it's not fair that you guys have to train because of me."

Peter looked at Sam incredulously, "For real? I don't buy that for a second."

"Well you should," Sam said, he grabbed Peter's wrist and stopped walking, nodding to the others to continue walking.

"Look, Pete, there's something I gotta tell you." Sam looked around the empty hallway, as if waiting for someone to jump out at them, and continued, "I just, well, I realized something when I woke up, and I'm afraid that if I don't do something about it, I might just explode."

Peter nodded, his face a serious mask, Sam looked pretty freaked, maybe something had gone seriously wrong from the spell and he was too afraid to tell a doctor or someone.

"What is it, Sam?" Peter asked, pulling his wrist out of Sam's loose grip. "Look, if the spell actually did something, you have to tell someone, I don't care how embarrassing it is…"

Peter continued to lecture as the other teen shuffled his feet for a moment before looking around the still deserted hallway again.

"I'm going to ask again, what's wrong S-" Sam grabbed Peter, mid-sentence, behind his head and brought their mouths together in a bruising kiss.


End file.
